So I came into Vincom for a bite to eat, and in the parking garage there was a car alarm going off. At first I thought it was coming from a car on the level below, but it turns out that it was coming from a motorbike. Not even a flash one, just a bog standard airblade.

It takes a special kind of jackass to put a car alarm on a motorbike in Vietnam. The way parking is here the damn thing must be going off constantly.

That idea is already out there. Some time ago I was next to some a-hole with a speaker system in the cowling of his bike, blasting out typically awful techno. The bike was one of those ludicrous looking maxi-scooters, which always evoke in me a combination of mirth and hatred when I see them.

Why? Seems to me that the main reason WHY is the same reason he wants to flaunt his wealth. They have been so poor for so long that a shiny object appeals to them, and gets them noticed. So whatever it is, cell phones, expensive motorbikes, clothes, cars, houses, anything that makes them stand out makes them feel like they are no longer an object of pity. Westerners do the same thing, but just not to the same degree, and we have had money for so long that our richer classes do not have the same level of need to prove how special they are to everyone else.

I will never forget the pre cell phone days, I was in a job where the young managers had beepers, and the assistant managers did not. So the managers with the beepers would do the little test button thing, creating a static noise, when chatting with the assistants. It was supposedly just to make sure the beeper was working, but actually it was more like some kind of primitive sexual display or something, like an animal would do. Proving your status and manhood by making it obvious you had a beeper and your subordinates did not. So funny, yet they were so serious about it. We really are just a short step up from the monkeys, or it seems that way to me. I guess the question is, how short is the step?

The VN do have a culture of allowing ridiculous behavior in many contexts. The way people drive here would cause severe road rage among more controlled peoples. Here they even have a saying for it. Something like "drive any way you want". It does not matter how abusive it is, until you actually run over someone it is accepted. I think the noise is the same thing, also burning garbage, throwing trash anywhere, and many other behaviors we find unacceptable. That is their culture. The zoo we escaped from may just be a bit more refined.

What is the Vietnamese desire to create as much noise as possible at all times?

Why?

WHy?

WHY?

I don't really want to get into the whole Saigon/Hanoi debate again but the noise pollution is, IMO, much worse up north. In regards to "WHY?" it's pretty weird. The noise blaring from some inconsiderate jackass just doesn't seem to bother most of the locals here. For the life of me I don't know why. Maybe they are just used to it. Anyway I suspect it might have just become a vicious circle. The inconsiderate jackasses persist in acting true to form, (largely because no one complains), whilst a new generation of Vietnamese grow up 'getting used to it' .

Hmm, and yet they seem to be very quick to complain if a group of foreigners happens to have a small party any time after about 11 o'clock. Yet insanely loud funerals that go on for 3 days, almost exclusively at anti-social hours are tolerated, as are people with huge sound systems who love the sound of their own singing.

I think Vietnam is fundamentally a country where people avoid confrontation. Nobody would even think of actually going round to their neighbours themselves to ask them to keep it down, it's always done through a third party. The actual confrontations I've seen have been pretty explosive and violent, suggesting that they're not particularly good at it. What confuses me is that other countries like the UK and Japan are also pretty bad at confrontation, and yet social pressure seems to keep people in line (literally). Although in the case of the UK, confrontations are often just as explosive. In Vietnam, there doesn't seem to be the same social pressure to consider other's feelings, space, comfort, or even safety. And yet, in my experience, people respond pretty well to a bit of polite confrontation if they push in in a queue, suggesting there is an element of shame associated with it. I also once went to someone's flat to ask them to keep the noise down (constant banging for a good 3 hours) and they obliged. It's almost like people are quick to apologize and recognise their behaviour if its pointed out to them, but they often don't have an instinctive sense of inconveniencing others. Massively generalising, of course. But my favourite example was when a car hit a truck at rush hour, causing a slight dent in the front of the car (which he somehow thought the truck was responsible for). They spent a good ten minutes discussing it in the middle of a busy roundabout, without at any point considering getting their vehicles to the side of the road first.

But as for funerals, I've never met a single person, Vietnamese or otherwise, who doesn't consider them a massive pain. But who's gonna go up to a funeral party and ask them to keep the noise down? I don't think even the most confrontational person would have the balls for that one.

IMHO car alarms are just the chorus. What is it with grinders and cutters? Is it some rite of passage to own and use a device for grinding and cutting metal? Is it the VN symbol equivalent to having 500 keys hanging from one's butt?

What is your take? I've seen this before. Of course there are real people in need, but there are a lot of scams.

Sympathy feeds drug habit in Ho Chi Minh City

Last Updated: Friday, January 04, 2013

A young man in a group of beggars in Ho Chi Minh City that have been trained to act like paralyzed or mentally ill people, earning big money from people’s sympathy to pay for their drug use and gambling

Some young drug and gambling addicts in Ho Chi Minh City do not have to rob or steal to fund their habit.

They just have to play mentally or physically ill handicapped people to earn hundreds of dollars by begging or selling lottery tickets, and several residents moved by their plight pay them extra money, Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper reporters found after days of investigation.
Most of the fraudulent beggars are healthy young men who have been trained to act like dysfunctional people.

A group of seven young men has been working for a lottery ticket retail agency in an alley on Nguyen Canh Chan Street, District 1.

Their employer, a husband and wife, had them trained by a man named Toan, around 24.

“I have been doing this for more than ten years and have turned dozens of strong young men into disabled people,” Toan told the reporters who pretended to be seeking jobs as such beggars.
Equipment needed for the job is cheap - some old, dirty torn clothes - but the important thing is how to act like being paralyzed or affected by cerebral-palsy, he said.

“No matter how much people beat or shout at you, you have to lie still, don’t stand up.

“When you drag yourself on the street, you don’t have to smile. You just need to keep your mouth twisted and people will be moved.

“When people ask what impairment you have, you have to speak with difficulty with a deformed mouth. They will totally buy it if you can shed some tears.

“In the worst case, if you are caught by the police, keep pretending that you are dumb or deaf and I will bail you out,” Toan said.

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He said his “students” can earn at least a hundred dollars a day, but some have landed big sums from rich people who want to engage in charity.

“Recently a Viet Kieu gave one of my students US$300. Some rich guys have given me dozens of wheelchairs. I took and sold them all,” said Toan, who drove the beggars to their places every day, pretending to carry them down to the road.

The “students” said most people easily sympathize, but sometimes when that did not happen, they just had to make themselves look more pitiable.

“This job requires you to be patient, accept to be ashamed and filthy,” said Diep, 19.

The beggar, with experience of five years, said the better one acts, the more money people will throw out.

“Sometimes you have to drag yourself across mud or garbage just to buy people’s tears,” he said.

The beggars said they have to work far from home as they do not want to get busted, and they also have a little self-respect, because they do not want familiar people to call them con-men.

Du, 16, from the south central province of Phu Yen, said he had to hide the job from his mother and relatives. Once, after she found out, he lied to her that he would quit, he said.

Most of the beggars came from this province more than 500 kilometers from the city.

What is amazing to me is that the beggars in the west are more aggressive and numerous than in VN. It is rare for me to encounter actually begging here, though we certainly have our share of people who will overcharge you in VN. In my native city in the states, the beggars on the street corners can be quite aggressive, and the experience is a lot more unpleasant than here. They also have their little act down, one can see them exchanging their cardboard signs as they change beggars every hour or so, obviously whatever message they give does not strictly apply to any one beggar, they just all have a pitch, more or less the same. Hungry, homeless, need work, god bless. I don't see much scripted begging there though, like pretending an illness or whatever. Instead, our guys are mostly substance abusers, but they do try to hide that fact, or at least not flaunt it while begging.

I've never really come from a place in the UK where we've had a lot of beggars, but the ones I've seen have generally been sat down and merely asked you for money as you passed. Certainly none of the intrusion you get in Vietnam. Although I did once read about a beggar in London who made a fortune by approaching people as they went to the atm (spent it all on heroin again though). I'd say the most common one is when I'm getting petrol.